FULTON’S “CLERMONT” ON THE HUDSON, 1807.
The Clermont made her first voyage from New York to Albany, August 7th, 1807. Her speed was about five miles an hour. During the winter of 1807-8 she was enlarged, her name being then changed to North River. She continued to ply successfully on the Hudson as a passenger boat for a number of years, her owners having acquired the exclusive right to navigate the waters of the State of New York by steam. The Car of Neptune and the Paragon, of 300 and 350 tons, respectively, were soon added to the Fulton & Livingstone Line. Both of these vessels were fitted with English engines. The Paragon continued to ply on the Hudson for about ten years, earning a good deal of money for the owners. About 1820, while ascending the river, she ran upon a rock and became a total wreck. Other steamboats were built for other waters, and very soon there were steamers plying on all the navigable rivers of the United States available for commerce. Mr. Fulton married a daughter of Mr. Livingstone. He died in New York in 1815, at the height of his fame and prosperity.
MISSISSIPPI STEAMBOAT “J. M. WHITE,” 1878.
OHIO STEAMBOAT “IRON QUEEN,” 1882.
The contrast between Fulton’s Clermont, or Bell’s Comet and the Atlantic Liner coursing over the sea at railway speed is very striking, and scarcely less remarkable the comparison of the river steamboat of to-day with these early experiments. America has developed a type of steamboat, or rather types of steamboats, peculiarly its own. The light-draught Mississippi steamers[6] bear little resemblance to the Hudson River and Long Island Sound boats while the American steam ferry-boat is a thing certainly not of beauty, but unique. Dickens in his American Notes speaks of the Burlington, the crack steamer on Lake Champlain in the early forties, as “a perfectly exquisite achievement of neatness, elegance and order—a model of graceful comfort and beautiful contrivance.” But Dickens never saw the Priscilla. She was only launched in 1894, and is claimed to be “pre-eminently the world’s greatest inland steamer—the largest, finest and most elaborately furnished steamboat of her class to be found anywhere.” The Priscilla is 440½ feet long, 52½ feet wide, or 95 feet over the paddle-boxes. The paddle-wheels are of the feathering type, 35 feet in diameter and 14 feet face. Her light draught is 12½ feet, and her speed easily 22 miles an hour, though the ordinary service of the line does not demand such fast running. Her night’s work is 181 miles, which she covers leisurely in ten hours. She cost $1,500,000. All the interior decorations are very elaborate and handsome. In her triple row of staterooms there is luxurious sleeping accommodation for 1,500 passengers. In the spacious dining-room 325 persons may be seated at one time. The grand saloon is a magnificent spectacle, large and lofty, superbly decorated and lighted by electricity. The Priscilla has cargo capacity for 800 tons of freight. “Her machinery is not only a marvel of design and workmanship, but it fascinates all persons interested in mechanical devices.” It consists of a double inclined compound engine, with two high-pressure cylinders, each fifty-one inches in diameter, and two low pressure, each ninety-five inches in diameter, all with a stroke of eleven feet. There are ten return tubular boilers of the Scotch type, each fourteen feet in diameter and fourteen feet long, constructed for a working pressure of 150 lbs. to the square inch. The indicated horse-power is 8,500. The machinery is principally below the main deck, leaving all the space on and above this deck available for general purposes.